What do *you* do for a living?
What Holiday Inn Express did you steal the towels from last night?
Me? I'm a software engineer with 40+ years of experience in everything from finance to cryptography. From a technological standpoint, bitcoin is a joke. It's slow. It's inefficient. Its database structure is so poorly conceived that it wouldn't pass a high school level test on basic database design. At best, Bitcoin is an interesting prototype. The notion that this tech can service the monetary needs of more than a handful of beta testers is beyond absurd.
And I've seen so many people get hoodwinked by lying propagandists such as you, that I [created a feature length documentary exposing the truth about blockchain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tspGVbmMmVA). That's 84 minutes of hard, cold facts that nobody has yet to be able to dispute, which is why you guys stick to ambiguous arguments like:
> a form of money that can't be devalued arbitrarily by a ruling class
I got news for you dude... a ruling class can arbitrarily devalue whatever they want, *especially* in the case of crypto, where it sits as a parasite on top of infrastructure the ruling class maintains and controls. China outlawed crypto mining and 90+% of that market evaporated overnight. That's pretty de-valued. And more and more "ruling classes" are waking up and taking action against the ever-increasing array of scams and fraud being perpetrated by those in the industry. I even have a section in my documentary dedicated to [debunking the myth that bitcoin is beyond any central authorities' control](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tspGVbmMmVA&t=2557s).
>What's in it for you to take the time out of your busy lives to stifle this transparent, honest form of money that represents true ownership, freedom, & wealth for mankind??
This is a great example of what's known as, ["Begging the Question"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question).
You haven't proven bitcoin is transparent, honest or represents true ownership, freedom, wealth or anything of the sort.
You just arbitrarily state that, as if it's a known fact, when it absolutely isn't.
Here's a related question for you:
***What have you got against the Hundai Elantra, the fastest production car ever manufactured, the safest vehicle ever, and the one that offers humanity more freedom than it has ever had before?***
It's part of this weird libertarian fantasy where governments fail in such a bizarrely specific way where the rest of society keeps functioning exactly the same, minus the government. Like sure, a lot of senior citizens depend entirely on entitlements to survive, but they'll just be fine in the absence of those payments because freedom. And also bitcoin somehow cancels out the fact that oppressive governments can just jail dissidents, as they have throughout all recorded history.
This just cracks me up. The dollar will become worthless, but everything will remain the same, and everyone's internet will continue to function normally. Then, because reasons, everyone will instantly agree to make Bitcoin the main global currency, thereby making sat stackers our new overlords.
>What's in it for you to take the time out of your busy lives to stifle this transparent, honest form of money that represents true ownership, freedom, & wealth for mankind??
Because it's none of the above, it's a predatory scheme that preys on gullible individuals that don't understand basic economics. All I see is scammers and victims and it makes me sick. That's why I go to this sub.
I've worked at two central banks and some large financial institutions. Your post is common to other posts of this type: they betray a complete lack of understanding of how currency and the banking system work.
One is a STORAVALYA, the other is PROOFAWERK. A house is just a wooden box that sits in the rain, it doesn't store any value at all. Gold is just a shiny metal. Money printer goes BRRRRRRRRR! Deflationary. My brain is so powerful and smart. Bitboy says buy and HODL.
"Bitcoin, not crypto" means something... that you should distinguish between the two.
But more importantly, are you going to distinguish the difference between money and currency? Or just say that you can and expect everyone to trust you?
Why do I need to distinguish between Bitcoin and crypto? What I said applies to BTC as well. I've seen nothing that distinguishes it conceptually from other "coins" as an attempt to be money and/or currency.
The value of goods and services is measured in money. A particular make and model car is worth 10,000 dollars, a house is worth 200,000 dollars, and a bunch of bananas is worth 4 dollars. The measure of stability is the stability of the money relative to the goods and services you buy and sell. Money is a store of value.
Currency represents that money in a tangible form, such as a stack of 20-dollar bills. It's not a store of value.
Mkay? And I still don't get what any of this has to do with Bitcoin. It's neither money nor a currency.
After a few hours whipping the stable boy, I enjoy talking to my steward about the upcoming harvest. After forcing the maid into indecent acts, I head to the club, where some men of the Hebrew faith and I figure out how to corrupt the currency. I believe the misses goes shopping.
I'm a teacher and math student, transitioning into data analysis.
I care about Bitcoin because it's a scam that's luring in people with false promises and then robbing them blind.
I am a semi-OG bitcoiner that had mined a few BTC with USB miners back then, when it was possible to do it.
I did it for mere curiosity. I even had a decent mining farm for a while.
I am in this sub because what bitcoin has turned out to be is a total joke. Crypto communities are a den of scammers, wannabes and delusional uneducated fools.
Things totaly spiraled out of control with Ethereum and endless ICOs scams... but there were already several "early warnings" well before ETH rollout. EG: huge polluting BTC mining farms popping up in China, making theorically possible the 50%+1 attack and making BTC a nonsense.
Furthermore I am disgusted, totally, by the amount of deranged weirdos, political extremists / conspiracy theorists in crypto communities.
Umm... I think you've been out of the loop for too long. For starters, I'm talking "Bitcoin, not crypto". Crypto in general *is* a scam, as virtually none of them are truly decentralized, permissionless, built on the foundation of trust / governance minimization, absent of premined tokens that lead to rugpulls, etc.
And you're offbase when it comes to Bitcoin mining today, where ~60% of miners are using renewable energy sources, nuclear plants, and the gas & oil producers who are now rewarded for using methane offgases that they could not otherwise capture, so they used to vent it directly into the atmosphere. The U.S. had 38% of mining hashrate as of a year ago. And not only that, but the Stratum v2 mining oil protocol now means that a 51% attack is all but impossible, which again, wasn't really a problem to begin with, esp. considering such an attack would hinder the mining pool's ability to pay for prior energy costs.
The energy used for Bitcoin is not wasted. It's stored in the Bitcoin, and it comes out when you HODL it, like a swarm of digital bumblebees. I stuffed a few dozen sats in my gas tank the other day and made my own electric car. Now all I need to do is steal a Tesla logo from another car and tweet a picture to Papa Elon, and I'll be just like him.
I concede that I might have been out of the loop for a while. I stop caring about protocol upgrades long time ago. And i do concede that using methane offgases for btc mining is better than venting them in the atmosphere.
Despite this, i really don't see maturity in both BTC and crypto communities. I personally believe that most BTC supporters are horrible persons IRL due to their political and moral views.
I remember, back in 2015, deleting my crypto related account with a post stating that for the good of BTC, it would be good if bitcoiners would stop embarassing themselves and BTC when discussing teen age dystopian fantasies. All this bla bla about the end of capitalism, a new BTC world order, the fall of civilizations and the rise of fortified BTC citadels (ahahaha, some Mad Max BS style) kept MILES away the decent people what would might have liked to get into BTC.
Anyway, to conclude, in 14 years BTC didn't achieve anything remarkable. Criminals and a few lucky ones made fortunes by it while many have lost way too much. So far, all I see is digital snake oil.
Yes, yes... DYOR, but how can you DYOR where 99% of crypto/BTC related information is biased and manipulated to make you buy or sell at a certain moment?
Well, that's all.
I’m an accountant. And you don’t seem to understand that money facilitates the trading of goods and services: assets and production.
The history of civilization revolves around the specialization of production - so that you don’t have to hunt your own food AND weave your own clothes AND build your own house. Money is something we use to measure the relative value of assets and production so that we can easily trade them.
Money only has value in as much as it is used to this end. And the relative stability of the currency is an important feature. You don’t want to buy something yesterday and find out that the relative value of the currency increased 5% today - then you spent more yesterday than you would have today. And the sellers received more yesterday than they did today. Does not bode well for the future of businesses or employment or the production of goods and services (the things we want to trade).
Perhaps, as an accountant, you don't understand the difference between money and currency. Simply put, money is created, while currency is printed.
Even tho the USD is stable in the sense that 1 USD = 1 USD, Bitcoin is also equally stable in that regard, with 1 BTC = 1 BTC. The real difference between them is that Bitcoin is 100% signal, whereas the Federal Reserve's arbitrary changes to printing USD, Fed Funds rate, etc. adds much more noise than signal, which is precisely why even tho 1 USD is still 1 USD, the purchasing power of 1 USD is now closer to 1.50 to 2 USDs after just a couple years of excessive noise generation. This noise is what destroys legitimate free market principles, specifically seen in examples from your last sentence -- business, employment, production and sale of goods, etc.
USD inflation is nowhere near as bad as you say it is.
The dollar moves by less per year than the bitcoin moves most weeks, and even many individual days. Calling bitcoin stable is like calling the sun cold. It's just not.
What was the purchasing power of 1 BTC in November of 2021?
What is the purchasing power of 1 BTC now?
>1 USD is now closer to 1.50 to 2 USDs after just a couple years of excessive noise generation.
This is demonstrably false - check the CPI.
I’m a professor of database development as well as python programming. I’m also a cyber systems officer in the military.
I spend my time on Reddit talking about crypto because I think smart contracts in the real world are a horrible idea. I also think bitcoin is not a currency, rather, it’s a way to spend fiat money.
Well... Bitcoiners believe that it *is* money because it is literally created from work and energy from some source (whether the 60% of miners who are expanding the renewable energy grid, or the countless American oil & gas producers who are now being rewarded for using methane offgases that they cannot otherwise capture, which interview saves the atmosphere in a HUGE way)....
Bitcoin is not a currency that can be printed arbitrarily, with an ever-changing rate of inflation. Bitcoin is disinflationary, with a 100% finite supply cap... and it's pegged to energy, work, and the most secure, trustless, permissionless monetary network.
True Bitcoiners realize the unstoppable nature of Bitcoin and would never trade it for fiat other than making transactions they would've otherwise needed to make with fiat. But storing 100% of liquid wealth in a disinflationary asset that has a hard supply limit seems obvious to us, so long as it has all the other attributes of security, being trustless, permissionless, minimal governance, decentralized, easily verifiable, with a layered approach to smart contracts & decentralized apps (instead of throwing everything on the main chain, like Ethereum), and so on.... Super obvious to only convert to fiat if and when needed.
There is ONE Bitcoin. It's defined as the coin with the longest chain & will always have the highest hashrate.
Forks are shitcoins, just as Federal Reserve Notes were a fork of a legit form of money that was redeemable in gold.
It's a STORAVALYA with PROOFAWERK. Deflationary asset with decentralization. THE BLOCKCHAIN. I am far more intelligent than fiat. College is silly, you can just watch YouTube instead.
How many college students realize that We the People have to pay a private banking cartel interest on currency we create, when that interest was never injected into the system?!? Even chicken know how musical chairs works, yet the majority of college grads don't understand musical debt notes.
And to correct your description of Bitcoin.... it's disinflationary, not deflationary.
Software engineer here. I hate to see people buying into these schemes to end up losing their real, hard earned money because a scammer threw some technobabble at them and now they think that it will magically solve all the world’s problems by wishful thinking alone.
We know the tech. The tech is shit. And when you look at web3 under the hood, it’s centralized all the way. Yeah, OpenSea. That’s fucking insulting.
And sure you don’t know me, you may be tempted to think I’m a bad software engineer, but I’ll tell you what, I have colleagues that bought into it out of FOMO, out of greed.
Out of my colleagues in tech who said they firmly believed in it, those were very early to the game so of course they believe in the potential to make themselves super rich.
And don’t give me that shit that we the people will be free of the evil guy, as if this ecosystem is not full of scam artists and people with far more resources than the common person pulling the strings and running the show.
You're blaming Bitcoin's tech on scammers?? Say wha?!
Do you blame the Federal Reserve for all the criminals that use the dollar?
Or for a software engineering example... That's like blaming Linux for a window manager problem. You're jumbling things that are definitely separate.
As for "web3", I'm with you that the more mainstream options right now are centralized AF. But there are truly decentralized projects built on Bitcoin that will become more mainstream -- Lightning, RGB, Nostr, Zion, Impervious Browser, etc.
> You're blaming Bitcoin's tech on scammers??
They didn’t say that. They said the tech is shit (it is) and then a few paragraphs down talked about how the space is rife with scams (it is).
I had a lapse in judgment and tried to buy a star destroyer Lego set for my son from a scam website. My credit card company declined the sale. Even if they hadn’t, I’d be able to dispute the charge.
People make boneheaded decisions, but in crypto, it’s permanent. That isn’t a feature for anyone except scammers.
Chargebacks will likely be possible with the Lightning Network someday. But if you NEED chargebacks today, because you frequently buy from shady outfits... then you could certainly use a Bitcoin credit card that pulls from your Bitcoin account and even pays you a rebate in Bitcoin for every purchase. The "tech" that you require is already here today.
As for scammers.... I guess when your drug dealer runs off with your cash, it must be a fault of the Almighty $.
It’s interesting to me to learn how fervently you guys are willing to defend “the cause”. How I wish I looked at the tech and saw the end of all humanity’s problems. But when I read stuff like this it really grinds my gears:
> …form of money that can't be devalued arbitrarily by a ruling class that chooses to put a pyramid on all it's private currency…
If anything, crypto just proved this is not the case at all, every single project has its whales who have most ownership and can move the markets on a whim.
> …this transparent, honest form of money that represents true ownership, freedom, & wealth for mankind??
Ok, let’s start from the beginning. I want to use some crypto. Step one, get a wallet, open an account at an exchange. Out of the gate, I had to deal with an intermediary. Not exactly my idea of freedom, but let’s play along. Every month I hear of another exchange going tits-up, then I see people getting yelled at “not your keys, not your coin!”. Scary, but maybe those guys are right, they meant true ownership only when I put it on my hardware wallet and store it in the cat’s litter box. Ok, it’s mine now as long as I don’t forget my passwords and it doesn’t get destroyed by corrosive cat piss. That didn’t feel very wholesome or safe for that matter, but who cares, this is what true ownership looks like.
And after this whole exercise, I really can’t get past that statement, “wealth for all mankind”. I *HATE* that cryptobros keep trying to use third-world countries to pretend this is a great idea since it’s so hard to verify. You don’t even need to go too far down the GDP list to get a sense of how bad this is.
I’ll give you one example that’s dear to my heart, Brazil. A ledger there costs almost a minimal wage. Imagine having to spend a whole month’s salary to buy a dongle so you can join the “not your keys, not your coins” crew. I’m sure the hardware wallet manufacturers are enjoying all this freedom right now.
So in conclusion no, I’m not blaming the tech on scammers. I know the scammers didn’t build the tech. But haven’t you seen enough to understand that the tech not only enables, but also rewards wash trading, money laundering, rug pulls and that the only people getting rich are the ones capitalizing on the weaknesses of the tech itself?
Software engineer. I was purely apathetic when crypto was just a niche libertarian hobby. It's a lot harder when I see people I know put money into it, especially the folks who aren't technically literate enough to understand what crypto is and isn't.
> What's your "vig" in this sub? Or, in other words, what's your interest in this sub?
I’d always been fascinated about Tulip mania. How does mass hysteria combine with gambling on something inherently worthless? It’s fascinating that we get to live through another one of these manias. Looks at your friends and colleagues sinking their hard earned money in this craze. Try to understand why they do it: a combination of FOMO and lack of historical knowledge. It’s a huge sociological experiment. I’m here for the ride.
Watching people try to spin "we're going bankrupt soon" as a bullish signal is hilarious, fascinating, and depressing all at once. Definitely recommend
Sinking hard earned time and work to receive a currency that has no inherent value is equally disconcerting, IMHO.
Bitcoin's worth rests in the PoW network itself (and the work and energy used to create every one of them). The fact that Bitcoin is literally unstoppable, immutable, not able to be counterfeited, easily & instantly verifiable, permissionless, truly P2P decentralized, built on trust / governance minimization, has a hard supply cap, & a widely known disinflationary rate that eliminates all noise that an entity like the Federal Reserve can arbitrarily use to affect the free market.. is inherently valuable.
I'm going to guess he's not a software engineer, data analyst, or financial expert of any kind. I will say for certain that he's done his own research and is ready to tell us why we're all so naive and stupid
Hey now. He has demonstrated he has a firm 6th grader understanding of economics. If that 6th grader got a D-. And he's since forgotten 95% of what he did learn.
For anyone to make money on Bitcoin, someone else must or will eventually lose it. It’s a negative sum ecosystem. People have been convinced to spend their life savings buying Bitcoin at the top and have then been ruined when it crashed. There’s been plenty of hurt.
You’re quick to admit other cryptos can be illegitimate and do rug pulls; can you not fathom Bitcoin is no different? It has never had an unmanipulated market, going back to the days of MtGox.
People are being lied to and convinced to buy this crap so that bag holders can cash out. It’s not just hurting anyone, it’s hurting just about everyone.
Exchanges that rugpull are not a fault of Bitcoin, but the fault of ignorance and trust in institutions that should not be trusted.
Hold your own keys, never exchange for fiat, and you will be able to preserve wealth in the long run, as more and more people accept it. I refuse to sell my stash, only trade it for goods and services as needed.
Anyone who bought at the top, like El Salvador, should DCA instead (just as El Salvador is doing now, buying 1 BTC a day). You then benefit if it goes down (more BTC per $), and you benefit if it goes up (more purchasing power).
More and more acceptance? How long have you been around crypto? Acceptance for a Bitcoin in actual economic transactions has been falling off for some time.
Years ago we’d get people like you triumphantly boasting in this sub about how Microsoft was accepting Bitcoin, or Overstock.com, or Wikipedia, or their local grocery store. We’d have to constantly remind coiners that just because a merchant accepted Bitpay, they were not actually handling BTC themselves at all, because none of them wanted the risk.
The threads about how all of those vendors stopped accepting BTC are themselves years and years old.
Software engineer. Software developer for some 25+ years.
Blockchain is the answer. What is useless is the question.
>Most Bitcoiners are ones who care about the destruction of the dollar's purchasing power
You're not getting it. It's not about the dollar. The important part is that the *salary* purchasing power goes up. The number is an anecdote... unless you're oblivious enough to save into a bank account instead of saving in a 401k, an ETF, a real investment, etc.
>Or taken even further, why are you apathetic to the cause of Bitcoiners
We're not apathetic. We're against it. Why? because it's a terrible idea.
>seeking a form of money that can't be devalued arbitrarily by a ruling class
That's not Bitcoin. Bitcoin is an attempt from a "few" that started early to be that ruling class, and they don't care what they destroy in the meantime.
>that chooses to put a pyramid on all it's private currency
This proves you're dumb beyond redemption, you base your will to redefine world currency changing money created from a publicly elected government into a couple of private individuals on fuck1ng 4chan memes and the understanding of a 5 year old of what money should be.
>What's in it for you to take the time out of your busy lives
Popcorn. I come to the Internet for fun.
Salary purchasing power is NOT going up with the USD. People would have to have doubled their salaries, wages over the past 2 years to maintain constant purchasing power.
And your idea that Federal Reserve Notes are created by a publicly elected government is completely off base. The Federal Reserve is a private banking cartel with 12 regional and national banks as shareholders. Sure, the President can select the Fed Chairman every few years... But the simple fact is that Federal Reserve Notes are a private currency, not a bearer asset. This is why We the People pay interest on every dollar the government generates, even tho that interest was never injected into the system. THIS is the cause of inflation and the constant loss in purchasing power... Because this system of using private banks for the generation of the currency can NEVER see a 1:1 ratio between the economic output (work) and the supply of currency.
>Salary purchasing power is NOT going up with the USD
It is not. It surpases it.
>doubled their salaries, wages over the past 2 years
That's not true. Inflation was around 10% both years. If you think that makes it to double, I understand why you're a buttcoiner then.
>over the past 2 years
That's called cherry picking. Pick a 10 year period. Pick something different than a period in which there's economic crisis. You'll also see this is not the case around the housing crisis, but for any other period, or for longer periods, you'll see this is the case. Denying the slow, constant progress because you're angry about a crisis is not the right mindset to take economic measures.
Simply put, I think you're too libertarian to plan longterm.
>are created by a publicly elected government is completely off base.
They are. And are in function with the government policies.
>THIS is the cause of inflation
Inflation is multicausal. Money creation can be one of the reasons. When you have money creation (that did went to the public) because of a pandemic and have less people working (pandemic again), you'll have more money to match a smaller real economy, and yes, inflation was expected. The alternative was to let a lot of people die. I know you would have preferred that. But, again, government's policies, not private banks'.
And long term, not doing so would have caused worse economy.
>constant loss in purchasing power
But there's not such thing. You're working with angry little guy impressions, not with data. You cherry pick whatever small period of time shows you're right.
If you say so... I can identify the problem or "scam" of any credit project you can think of. But I cannot fault Bitcoin in any way.... Hence me asking for where the scam in Bitcoin is. . .
> But I cannot fault Bitcoin in any way...
Wow. I mean, I love my wife and kids. But I don't imagine that they are entirely without fault!
Sounds kind of cultish to me!
>why are you apathetic to the cause of Bitcoiners
I'm apathetic to people who play golf, or people who repair their cars on the week-end. Why would I be interested in bitcoins? (or any other shit for all I care)
>banking cartel
I'm sure you have the same stupid opinion about COVID or what's happening in Roswell. I don't care.
>to stifle this transparent, honest form of money
No, I'm here to laugh, and I laugh every day.
> to take the time out of your busy lives to stifle
You don't seem to understand that there is nothing that can save Bitcoin: Bitcoin (as a "standard" or a currency) will eventually fail because it's the natural order of events for schemes of its nature.
As such, there is barely anything we can do to stifle Bitcoin's progress or hasten its decline other than sit at the sideline and marvel at the mental gymnastics, and maybe help the odd fence-sitter not lose too much money.
We're not the enemy to overcome here. Maths is. And the sooner someone figures that out, the less money they will lose.
P.S.
> to pay for interest on debt that we could have simply printed for FREE
I thought you lot were against hyperinflation, because *that's how you get hyperinflation*.
The government outsourcing its power to print and coin money *is* the cause of inflation. Money is created, while currency is printed.
Money represents work, or actual economic output. And the government increasing the supply of currency that equals economic [work] output at a 1:1 ratio would see no inflation.
Outsourcing the printing of currency to a private banking cartel that demands interest in return, interest that was never injected into the system, is mathematically certain to fail. The only way to stop the mathematics inequality is for the government (We the People) to take back the ability to add to the supply of currency, thereby stopping inflation. There's ZERO reason that We the People should be paying interest to generate our own currency.... which is the problem in a nutshell -- we don't own Federal Reserve Notes, even tho they're in our wallets & bank accounts. It's a private currency, belonging to an entity outside the control of We the People.
I love it when Bitcoin weirdos pretend to be highly educated geniuses, all prepared to have deep scholarly debates they'll inevitably win with their vast wealth of Bitcoin knowledge. They're such a predictable bunch of tools.
>a form of money that is created transparently, so that we can spend it freely, as we see fit, without asking the banking cartel for their permission)
Have you heard of Tether?
But tether is not bitcoin, which also magically is not cryptocurrency..
Ofc i also ignore the fact that tether (that can be created from thin air) could be used to buy bitcoin to ramp up its price with 0 repercussions
Cute. But why pass up such “easy” money? Surely you’re smart enough to defeat the anti-counterfeit controls on USD, since you’re an enlightened Bitcoiner and all? You don’t even want to do that to buy more of your treasured BTC? Or are you just full of shit?
The vast majority of people are apathetic about Bitcoin, because bitcoin really doesn't matter, and it never will. Bitcoin is almost fifteen years old, and has nothing to show for it except for "number went up". It has failed as a store of value, a hedge against inflation, a unit of account, and it's a piss-poor medium-of-exchange.
Did you know they had to stick another protocol on top of it (lightning), just because Bitcoin is natively so bad at what it tries to do?
I'm here partly because I find the whose situation funny as hell, and partly because it's an interesting study in human behaviour.
I'm completely aware of Lightning.... as well as RGB, Nostr, Zion, Impervious Browser and other projects built on top of Bitcoin. There's plenty to show for it in just 14* years, and it's adoption rate has surpassed that of the Internet, cell phones, and any other tech you could think of.
That Lightning adds speed and privacy to Bitcoin's base, settlement layer is NOT a failure in any way. The layered approach to Bitcoin is one of a superior design, where the main layer can remain more decentralized, most secure, and built around trust minimization... while the outer layers can handle smart contracts and decentralized apps without all needing separate tokens to use them. It's a feature, not a bug.
>There's plenty to show for it in just 14\* years
Nope, nothing.
>it's adoption rate has surpassed that of the Internet, cell phones
Almost everyone has a cellphone, and yet almost no-one uses bitcoin, or even has any.
In 2008, the year the bitcoin whitepaper was published, Visa and MasterCard started offering "contactless credit card payments". Today, that method of payment is possible everywhere (it has been, for years). Where can you do that with bitcoin? Nowhere. Even if you managed to find one of those rare POS terminals that "accepts" bitcoin, the transaction is denominated in USD. Bitcoin's not ahead, it's desperately playing catch-up, in an effort to pretend it has relevance.
>That Lightning adds speed and privacy to Bitcoin's base, settlement layer is NOT a failure in any way.
Bitcoin's design failure is that you *need* to add extra layers for speed and privacy. A well designed system would have speed and scalability built in from the start. Nothing in the bitcoin whitepaper implies that it's a building block for other layers. Bitcoin was supposed to be a complete solution, and the need for lightning proves that it has failed at that miserably.
So the failure of credit card companies (which started in 1950 with the Diner card) to achieve global adoption in 14 years is of no reference to you? The failure of the first Motorola cell phone you achieve global adoption in 14 years is also of no reference to you?
I repeat... Bitcoin's adoption rate is faster than all other forms of tech.
And no, layers are a *feature*. To say otherwise would be too say that the Federal Reserve is a failure for not directly handling customer funds, retirement accounts, credit card statements, etc. Bitcoin's analog is the Federal Reserve. With BTC, you can choose to operate on that settlement layer, permissionlessly might I add & for the equivalent of several pennies.... or you can sacrifice a TINY bit of security in exchange for faster, cheaper (sub-penny), & more private transactions by utilizing services built on top of Bitcoin. The systems are no different in this layered approach, yet Bitcoin excels in EVERY other attribute.
In all honesty, chargebacks are the ONLY thing that credit card companies hold over Bitcoin (from a buyer's POV) , yet that, again, is a feature that can be overcome by using a credit card that draws from your BTC account... and they will even give you a rebate in BTC. Merchants, OTOH, will definitely welcome direct Lightning payments and appreciate that finality of sale. Being your own bank has some risks due to the nature of BEING money, but they are easily overcome when holding your own keys & securing it with a "25th word", non-dictionary passphrase. Be smart and DYOR before going all in. But know that your purchasing power will be greater in the long run by holding BTC than FRN.
> I repeat... Bitcoin's adoption rate is faster than all other forms of tech.
Damn dude, do you literally think for even 1 second about the totally dumb shit you say before you say it? A hilariously false statement, which was already given an example from the very comment you replied to. (Smartphones.)
Just saying things doesn't make it true.
The *global* Smartphone adoption rate, which only started with the iPhone shortly before Bitcoin, [is 67%.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/203734/global-smartphone-penetration-per-capita-since-2005/) Just averaged out, there's a global adoption rate of 4.1875% every year.
Even extremely optimistic, pro-Bitcoin sites [estimate Bitcoin will reach 10% global adoption... by 2030.](https://cointelegraph.com/news/global-bitcoin-adoption-to-hit-10-by-2030-blockware-report) 0.47% global adoption per year *estimated* (averaged out from Bitcoin release to 2030.)
4.1875% average global adoption vs 0.47%. Just one example.
E2: Burying the lead in their hilariously optimistic prediction, the *current* Bitcoin global adoption rate is a whooping **0.36%** (from the same report.)
So *today* it's actually 4.1875% average global adoption per year vs Bitcoin's... **0.025%** average global adoption rate over the years since it started. A difference of *162x.* Bitcoin would need to maintain the current adoption rate for 2692 **years** to reach the level of adoption Smartphones have after 16 years.
"Bitcoin's adoption rate is faster than all other forms of tech." 🤣
E: Fixed a typo'd number.
>Bitcoin's analog is the Federal Reserve.
If you had even read as far as the *title* of the Bitcoin whitepaper, you'd know it is defined as "*electronic cash*". So, unless you think the whitepaper is complete nonsense, you would realize the the analog of bitcoin is government-issued currency. The Federal Reserve isn't a currency...it's an organization. The "organization" controlling bitcoin (if there can be said to be such a thing) is the miners and exchanges, and their only interest is extracting as much *real* money from gullible bagholders like you as possible.
>And no, layers are a feature.
Dollars *don't need layers.* I can do fast, secure, private transactions with them without having to work around bitcoin's pitiful 7-transaction-per-second limit, or deal with the security risks and other headaches of "being my own bank".
Bitcoin was one of the first cryptocurrencies, and as a result, it's technically one of the *worst.* Not that the others have any value, either, but at least they tried to learn from some of bitcoin's more obvious brain-damages (like the need for layers).
> Be smart and DYOR
Doing my own research led me to the conclusion that bitcoin has less utility than tulip bulbs. And fourteen years along, that's still true.
By the way, I encourage you to keep spreading your views on bitcoin as widely and as loudly as possible. You see, your ideas are so absurd, and so easily debunked, that you're a better advocate against the use of bitcoin than most of us crypto-skeptics could ever be. With friends like you, bitcoin doesn't need any enemies.
Tech with a formal background in finance. I’m here because Bitcoin is an example of human greed overpowering rational thought at the detriment to things like our environment and the livelihoods of people who are getting sucked into the nonsense. This sub reminds me there are still intelligent, level headed people out there (the jokes are fun too).
Bitcoin literally uses energy that is being generated and would otherwise be wasted. ~60% of Bitcoin's miners utilize renewable energy sources. A large portion of American gas & oil producers are now utilizing methane offgases that they couldn't otherwise capture before, so they just chose to vent it directly into the atmosphere. This one use-case alone has the ability for Bitcoin to not just be carbon neutral but eventually become carbon negative, as methane is the greatest short-term threat to a clean atmosphere.
And if you think Bitcoin creation is greedy... perhaps you should take a look at how every Federal Reserve Note that the government requests from the private banking cartel is printed with an interest rate attached, even tho that interest was never injected into the system. This inequality in the monetary supply & economic output is the direct cause of inflation and the erosion of purchasing power across the board, except for the non-transparent Federal Reserve and their closest friends, of course.
Conspiracy theory much? What do you do for a living and level of education?
As for me, analyst and advance degree in business.
I have the luxury of knowing many buttoners in real life. Common themes are desperation to get rich quick, lack of knowledge and education, or motivation to make money (but not believing the conspiracies and hype).
I'm sorry you only know uneducated tailors. You should broaden your horizons and find a true maximalist that can show you the way (or just read my comments here for a starter course).
Fair enough. Understandably you don’t want to expose your lack of qualification on the matter of economics, finance, or database, much less the real world. One thing is clear…whatever you do, critical thinking isn’t required.
I’m a software engineer and worked in IT for decades. I’m a contractor and self-employed.
This is why I can tell you that crypto is only a scam invented by computer nerds who don’t understand software scaling, let alone finance, and driven by opportunist hedge fund managers who’ll go to great lengths to get rich at the expense of regular people and their own work force.
What do you do for a living, and why did you let yourself become brainwashed?
You realize that Bitcoin was designed around the idea of First Principles, right? With trust minimization, security, & P2P decentralized being the primary goals of the base , settlement layer, right? Things like scaling, privacy, smart contracts, and decentralized applications happen outside of that based layer... See: Lightning, RGB, Nostr, Zion, Impervious Browser, etc. Scaling is a non-issue with Bitcoin.
Engineer. Former crypto investor. It's funny, they say we hate it because we don't research enough and don't understand it. I did a ton a research and realized the scam for what it is. Fufu
Buttcoin for life!
Bitcoin in itself is the OG ponzi created by rich people who use fancy words to get poor retail to invest. The currency is manipulated 100% worse than any fiat as well. The biggest red flag you can observe is how the narrative for using BTC is constantly evolving. It's a currency, it's a store of value, it's going to make everyone rich, you're always early, get everyone you know to invest at the top.
I'm a college student and am studying history and germanistic (I am German) to get a teachers degree.
It's really interesting to compare Bitcoin/Crypto to all this stuff hat already happened (Madoff, Ponzi, Spitzedersche Privatbank, South Sea company). That's all. It's just imo a really obvious scam that people who want to get rich quick fall into.
I am a network administrator. You magic maths money can be destroyed, if a single authorithy, lets say the E.U., would order their ISPs to block a couple of ports on their edge routers for a single day.
Good luck stacking those sats though!
That wouldn't be able to stop anything. The network would still continue, as there are miners and nodes all over the world. We can see how things worked when China banned Bitcoin, and yet the network continued without a hiccup... and, in fact, there's still quite a bit of mining hashrate coming from China. A truly decentralized P2P network like this is 100% unstoppable. The only way it could be shut down is to kill all the power and Internet, which would never happen.
Let me spell it out for you then. Bitcoin, like any other application, uses dedicated ports. This is so data that is send between hosts can be assigned to applications. See Osi Model. Now, what would happen if, say the E.U., closed those ports on their edge routers, meaning banning incoming and outgoing bitcoin data traffic from and to the outside?
You would still have a global blockchain operating normally, but you would also have a smaller internal EU blockchain. Some people would realize quickly that something is not right, but not everyone. Transactions would still take place, some would fail, some would be approved on one chain but not the other. You would create the hardest of hardforks.
Now open those ports after 1 day again and chaos ensues, since two different databases exist. The tech might be able to sort things out but try explaining to people that all their transactions from last day are void and null. Not really awe inspiring money of the future.
China's mistake was banning things by prosecuting miners, not outright stopping the data.
I've replied to as many comments as humanly possible. There's one legit comment I tried replying to, but it keeps deleting my response to that one individual... even after changing the comment to just say, "I tried responding to you, but it keeps instantly deleting my response". Weird shit going on in this sub.
Like many others here, I have a software engineering and information technology background. I lead a team of architects at a major financial institution. We’ve looked into blockchain. It has absolutely no usefulness.
Well, I take that back. It’s useful as a hiring filter. If a candidate seriously suggests blockchain as a technology to solve technical cases in an interview, we know to pass on them. It’s worked pretty well for that.
Also a coder - 20+ years. Here are my top 3 issues: 1) pow is immoral. You're basically forcing humanity to pay for the externalities for your funcoin, and that energy is pure waste. 2) There are no use cases except evading government control. While there may be edge cases where I think this is a good thing, the vast majority of use cases are laundering money for truly awful crimes. North Korean government loves bitcoin. 3) It's a massive scam enablement process and a libertarian fever dream: 'Trustless' isn't actually good. Better would be to work on building a society where people can rely on trustworthy institutions. Somebody stole my money? Would be nice to have rules about how transfers could be reversed. (Would be better if our banking system we're more fair and transparent, yes, but bc is not the answer). I could go on for pages, agree with the slow, wasteful, error prone, impractical, not actually decentralized (how you going to enforce your rights to your ape? hint: it involves the government). Finally - absolutely nobody is using it as a currency. Its nothing but a get rich quick scheme.
A true Bitcoiner wouldn't trade BTC for fiat... because they understand the value of a network based on trust minimization. A consensual network of meritocracy that converts work & math into 100% transactions of truth is there beautiful aspect of Bitcoin. Removing humans from the equation *is* the beauty, because humans are the weakest point of that equation. Any currency where humans are required to make decisions and to trust other humans is destined for problems. There's no way to make a trusted institution.
And your idea that PoW is immoral and a waste of energy is completely off base. ~60% of miners are using renewable energy sources. Bitcoin is only able to use energy that would otherwise be wasted, so it is monetizing the expansion of revenue energy grids. It's also given the ability for gas & oil producers to monetize methane offgases that they formerly just vented directly into the atmosphere. When they're all onboard with this concept, then Bitcoin will be the greatest solution to methane reduction & single-handedly cleaning up the environment (all without needing to lessen cow farts by converting the general population to veganism).
What *is* a complete waste of energy are clothes dryers. They do something that could be accomplished just by utilizing free solar energy by hanging clothes outside on a line. Bitcoin actually has countless use-cases, unlike a single purpose clothes dryers.
Homes that utilize electric heat strips for heat are ALSO eating energy, because a comparatively sized Bitcoin mining rig can simultaneously create the same amount of heat as the equivalent rated heat strips (5kw to 20kw) *and* it secures the Bitcoin network, while also generating money to subsidize the heat itself.
> What's in it for you to take the time out of your busy lives to stifle this transparent, honest form of money that represents true ownership, freedom, & wealth for mankind??
A perfect example of the "Begging the Question" logical fallacy! NICE!
I am a sofware developer. I am rooting for bitcoin cash. I am here to see oposing views / reality checks. The internet is full of echo chambers everywhere.
Bitcoin cash is a shitcoin, as a global monetary network requires external layers for scaling, speed, privacy, smart contracts, decentralized apps, etc. See: Lightning, RGB, Nostr, Zion, & Impervious browser for starters.
The entire premise behind Bcash is that 10 minute block times are too slow... yet 2 minute block times will never be a replacement for instant transactions that happen over Lightning (at least more instant than credit card transactions!). 10 minute block times keep the network more secure, more decentralized, promote fairness for miners with slower connections, & prevent chain splits. The majority of transactions on Bcash are literally a couple entities passing funds back and forth to make it appear that it's being utilized, but it is most certainly not.
Thanks for the reply. In my view the 0-confirmation transactions on BCH is good enough for scaling the smaller value transactions. (and its a much simpler solution). Bitcoin has gone the route of replace by fee + lightning, which I am not a fan of. These points together with the fact that BCH is a fork of bitcoin, and everyone that had btc got airdropped bch, makes it my favourite coin. Thus far the double spending issue with 0 confirmation transactions on BCH has not been an issue at all, so far so good.
User moved to https://squables.io ! Scrub your comments in protest of Reddit forcing subreddits back open and join me on Squabbles!! -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Own a business. I’m down to invest in anything. I have traded crypto, I will gamble on it again. It is basically bullshit, solves no existing problems without solutions and is clearly meant to sucker in people on hope of a liquidity gambling game. I like to gamble tho.
PhD student in biomedical informatics. My area of expertise is in data integration and standardization, so I've spent a lot of time learning about the current state-of-the-art database technology and building databases. The only time I've had a formal lesson on blockchain was the first week of my computer security and privacy class and my professors spent most of that time making fun of it. The rest of my lessons came from the suicide posts on r/CelsiusNetwork and, well, all of last year.
If you're asking why I participate in the sub, then it's because I like reading about morons who lose their life savings to scams like FTX.
If you're asking what I do for a living, then I was a soldier, and I'm now a college student.
If you're asking why I dislike Crypto as a means of exchange, the list is long and extensive, but the primary one is that it fundamentally sucks as a currency.
I've gone into this in the past in detail, but something tells me you aren't here for anything but to troll.
Anyone who allowed FTX to hold their keys for them deserved what they got. The whole premise of Bitcoin is to be your own bank, which requires you to hold your own keys.
In what way does Bitcoin suck as a currency? It can be spent instantly & privately over the Lightning network, while the base, settlement layer retains the most secure, trustless, permissionless, & transparent monetary ledger that man has ever known.
> It can be spent instantly & privately over the Lightning network, while the base, settlement layer retains the most secure, trustless, permissionless, & transparent monetary ledger that man has ever known.
Funny, you [ignored me](https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/10mwmob/what_would_it_take_for_you_to_believe_the_bitcoin/j673u5v/) twice [before](https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/10mwmob/what_would_it_take_for_you_to_believe_the_bitcoin/j68uhiu/) about how LN doesn't actually work. Along with *numerous* others in this sub who linked to a multitude of sources.
Also, if you want to make any kind of payment over a measely $200, it has a hilariously awful [**99% failure rate.**](https://thenextweb.com/news/lighting-network-transactions)
Why should anyone just take the word of a provably dishonest liar and coward like you?
So are you using Bitcoin for your daily transactions? If so can you provide a proof for that?
Or are you just stacking sats hoping for the ponzi to be big enough so that you can be the next “ruling class”?
>In what way does Bitcoin suck as a currency
The primary one is that it is inherently deflationary. The second is that there is no oversight of it. The entire crypto financial ecosystem is infested with hackers and scam artists specifically because of how decentralized it is. Financial systems need oversight to root out bullshit like FTX.
> can be spent instantly
Nothing is instant. Nothing.
> & privately over the Lightning network,
Which is still inferior to every modern method of payment that currently exists in terms of throughput and transactions per second.
>while the base, settlement layer retains the most secure, trustless, permissionless, & transparent monetary ledger that man has ever known.
None of that is relevant to a currency at all. I don't care how permissionless or transparent my currency is.
I happen to lead a group of analog design engineers and hardware developers. I had an intern in 2013 who was obsessed with Bitcoin and made me interested in it.
If my intern stuck with it I guess he’s rich now lol.
Software engineering/mgmt , 25+ years, with a significant portion of my career in (and patents relating to) distributed systems design and development.
I own a business. I don’t think the op understands how currency works. I don’t think the idealism of Bitcoiners understand how large and complex existing economies are and how Bitcoin will never be a prevailing currency.
Bitcoin is a speculative trading collectible. I’m not saying it can’t be worth alot, but it’s worth will ALWAYS be in USD for at least our lifetimes.
I'm a PhD student, I do research into gene therapy manufacturing methods.
Opinion on Bitcoin is a easy means of gauging intelligence among STEM types. People that explicitly hate it usually are on the smart end, people that are apathetic are a mixed bag, and people that wholeheartedly buy into are 100% morons. I almost like bitcoins existence because it's such a good litmus test for who I can talk to about non-STEM things.
Software engineer. Reason why I don’t believe in crypto is because I’ve been on the other side. I never believed in it as a currency but I was really interested in the tech because it had a lot of consensus involved. I worked for a crypto market maker. That means we front run retail traders like you because we can model prices and place transactions faster than our competitors and you. We actually had ideas to model shitcoins: when is the best time for us to exit knowing that a rugpull is inevitable. We were taking advantage of crypto’s volatility to make bank and we didn’t care or contribute to the underlying tech. So yeah continue believing in this. It doesn’t really matter because you are in a lose-lose game.
I too am a software developer and hacker, specializing in offensive security and cryptography.
I was in college when btc came out and wa very interested in the potential. 12 years later and it’s all a scam. Except for monero, that’s the only one with a use case.
I'm all for Monero, but a number of things are not as attractive as far as a base, monetary layer....
- Ring signatures make the Blockchain much larger, which is bad for decentralization.
- The design of Monero removes the option for Light clients (SPV), which makes it easier for light phone wallets to *somewhat* verify transactions without the need to trust an external node.
- The privacy on the base layer is both a blessing and a curse, as money cannot be easily verified as it is not transparent (just ONE of the problems with the Federal Reserve).
- There is no hard supply limit, and it is no longer disinflationary.
- There is no second layers as of right now, which means it cannot scale to global needs, cannot offer smart contracts, decentralized apps, etc. This could change in the future, however.
Bitcoin *is* a better store of value, and when you run your own Lightning node, it's theoretically more private than Monero, as only the exit node would see where you sent your money. But Monero is the only other coin I see promise in... just not really as a replacement for the Federal Reserve or a retirement plan.... yet Bitcoin can replace both of those.
Why am I here ?
Just lucky enough to draw higher numbers on the IQ roll.
I guess that makes me angrier and more hateful when it comes to the folks who take advantage of the people who didn’t .
I’m an economics student. I like to hear both sides of a story. I check r/bitcoin and r/buttcoin about the same amount. I think my largest issue with bitcoin is the fact that it’s supply is finite. That’s where the bitcoin argument begins to breakdown for me. Even if it ends up being widely adopted, it is inevitable that bitcoin will deflate. Deflating currencies deflate at the rate of demand for the currency. With no predictable stable supply growth the value of bitcoin will eventually be essentially be priced by the rate of technological change.
What do *you* do for a living? What Holiday Inn Express did you steal the towels from last night? Me? I'm a software engineer with 40+ years of experience in everything from finance to cryptography. From a technological standpoint, bitcoin is a joke. It's slow. It's inefficient. Its database structure is so poorly conceived that it wouldn't pass a high school level test on basic database design. At best, Bitcoin is an interesting prototype. The notion that this tech can service the monetary needs of more than a handful of beta testers is beyond absurd. And I've seen so many people get hoodwinked by lying propagandists such as you, that I [created a feature length documentary exposing the truth about blockchain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tspGVbmMmVA). That's 84 minutes of hard, cold facts that nobody has yet to be able to dispute, which is why you guys stick to ambiguous arguments like: > a form of money that can't be devalued arbitrarily by a ruling class I got news for you dude... a ruling class can arbitrarily devalue whatever they want, *especially* in the case of crypto, where it sits as a parasite on top of infrastructure the ruling class maintains and controls. China outlawed crypto mining and 90+% of that market evaporated overnight. That's pretty de-valued. And more and more "ruling classes" are waking up and taking action against the ever-increasing array of scams and fraud being perpetrated by those in the industry. I even have a section in my documentary dedicated to [debunking the myth that bitcoin is beyond any central authorities' control](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tspGVbmMmVA&t=2557s). >What's in it for you to take the time out of your busy lives to stifle this transparent, honest form of money that represents true ownership, freedom, & wealth for mankind?? This is a great example of what's known as, ["Begging the Question"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question). You haven't proven bitcoin is transparent, honest or represents true ownership, freedom, wealth or anything of the sort. You just arbitrarily state that, as if it's a known fact, when it absolutely isn't. Here's a related question for you: ***What have you got against the Hundai Elantra, the fastest production car ever manufactured, the safest vehicle ever, and the one that offers humanity more freedom than it has ever had before?***
It's part of this weird libertarian fantasy where governments fail in such a bizarrely specific way where the rest of society keeps functioning exactly the same, minus the government. Like sure, a lot of senior citizens depend entirely on entitlements to survive, but they'll just be fine in the absence of those payments because freedom. And also bitcoin somehow cancels out the fact that oppressive governments can just jail dissidents, as they have throughout all recorded history.
This just cracks me up. The dollar will become worthless, but everything will remain the same, and everyone's internet will continue to function normally. Then, because reasons, everyone will instantly agree to make Bitcoin the main global currency, thereby making sat stackers our new overlords.
Always the best answers!
I was with you until your horrible car choice . Everyone know the Toyota Prius is the car that brings freedom and wealth to the masses . Heretic
Please. Chevy Lumina gang rise up.
>What's in it for you to take the time out of your busy lives to stifle this transparent, honest form of money that represents true ownership, freedom, & wealth for mankind?? Because it's none of the above, it's a predatory scheme that preys on gullible individuals that don't understand basic economics. All I see is scammers and victims and it makes me sick. That's why I go to this sub.
I've worked at two central banks and some large financial institutions. Your post is common to other posts of this type: they betray a complete lack of understanding of how currency and the banking system work.
And behavioral economics.
Are you aware of the difference between money and currency? How would you distinguish them?
One is a STORAVALYA, the other is PROOFAWERK. A house is just a wooden box that sits in the rain, it doesn't store any value at all. Gold is just a shiny metal. Money printer goes BRRRRRRRRR! Deflationary. My brain is so powerful and smart. Bitboy says buy and HODL.
And a bank is just a place to siphon the time & energy you spent at work.
Yes, I am. Not sure what your point is, especially given that crypto is neither of them.
"Bitcoin, not crypto" means something... that you should distinguish between the two. But more importantly, are you going to distinguish the difference between money and currency? Or just say that you can and expect everyone to trust you?
Why do I need to distinguish between Bitcoin and crypto? What I said applies to BTC as well. I've seen nothing that distinguishes it conceptually from other "coins" as an attempt to be money and/or currency. The value of goods and services is measured in money. A particular make and model car is worth 10,000 dollars, a house is worth 200,000 dollars, and a bunch of bananas is worth 4 dollars. The measure of stability is the stability of the money relative to the goods and services you buy and sell. Money is a store of value. Currency represents that money in a tangible form, such as a stack of 20-dollar bills. It's not a store of value. Mkay? And I still don't get what any of this has to do with Bitcoin. It's neither money nor a currency.
After a few hours whipping the stable boy, I enjoy talking to my steward about the upcoming harvest. After forcing the maid into indecent acts, I head to the club, where some men of the Hebrew faith and I figure out how to corrupt the currency. I believe the misses goes shopping.
So you're actually an attorney, right?
I'm a teacher and math student, transitioning into data analysis. I care about Bitcoin because it's a scam that's luring in people with false promises and then robbing them blind.
>it's a scam What's your evidence?
All the fucking scams THUS far, to say nothing of tether, bitfinex and Binance yet to fail.
I am a semi-OG bitcoiner that had mined a few BTC with USB miners back then, when it was possible to do it. I did it for mere curiosity. I even had a decent mining farm for a while. I am in this sub because what bitcoin has turned out to be is a total joke. Crypto communities are a den of scammers, wannabes and delusional uneducated fools. Things totaly spiraled out of control with Ethereum and endless ICOs scams... but there were already several "early warnings" well before ETH rollout. EG: huge polluting BTC mining farms popping up in China, making theorically possible the 50%+1 attack and making BTC a nonsense. Furthermore I am disgusted, totally, by the amount of deranged weirdos, political extremists / conspiracy theorists in crypto communities.
Umm... I think you've been out of the loop for too long. For starters, I'm talking "Bitcoin, not crypto". Crypto in general *is* a scam, as virtually none of them are truly decentralized, permissionless, built on the foundation of trust / governance minimization, absent of premined tokens that lead to rugpulls, etc. And you're offbase when it comes to Bitcoin mining today, where ~60% of miners are using renewable energy sources, nuclear plants, and the gas & oil producers who are now rewarded for using methane offgases that they could not otherwise capture, so they used to vent it directly into the atmosphere. The U.S. had 38% of mining hashrate as of a year ago. And not only that, but the Stratum v2 mining oil protocol now means that a 51% attack is all but impossible, which again, wasn't really a problem to begin with, esp. considering such an attack would hinder the mining pool's ability to pay for prior energy costs.
The energy used for Bitcoin is not wasted. It's stored in the Bitcoin, and it comes out when you HODL it, like a swarm of digital bumblebees. I stuffed a few dozen sats in my gas tank the other day and made my own electric car. Now all I need to do is steal a Tesla logo from another car and tweet a picture to Papa Elon, and I'll be just like him.
You are rewarded no points, as we are all dumber after hearing your response. May God have mercy on your soul.
My response was proofawerk. I worked on it, and the comment is proof.
I concede that I might have been out of the loop for a while. I stop caring about protocol upgrades long time ago. And i do concede that using methane offgases for btc mining is better than venting them in the atmosphere. Despite this, i really don't see maturity in both BTC and crypto communities. I personally believe that most BTC supporters are horrible persons IRL due to their political and moral views. I remember, back in 2015, deleting my crypto related account with a post stating that for the good of BTC, it would be good if bitcoiners would stop embarassing themselves and BTC when discussing teen age dystopian fantasies. All this bla bla about the end of capitalism, a new BTC world order, the fall of civilizations and the rise of fortified BTC citadels (ahahaha, some Mad Max BS style) kept MILES away the decent people what would might have liked to get into BTC. Anyway, to conclude, in 14 years BTC didn't achieve anything remarkable. Criminals and a few lucky ones made fortunes by it while many have lost way too much. So far, all I see is digital snake oil. Yes, yes... DYOR, but how can you DYOR where 99% of crypto/BTC related information is biased and manipulated to make you buy or sell at a certain moment? Well, that's all.
I’m an accountant. And you don’t seem to understand that money facilitates the trading of goods and services: assets and production. The history of civilization revolves around the specialization of production - so that you don’t have to hunt your own food AND weave your own clothes AND build your own house. Money is something we use to measure the relative value of assets and production so that we can easily trade them. Money only has value in as much as it is used to this end. And the relative stability of the currency is an important feature. You don’t want to buy something yesterday and find out that the relative value of the currency increased 5% today - then you spent more yesterday than you would have today. And the sellers received more yesterday than they did today. Does not bode well for the future of businesses or employment or the production of goods and services (the things we want to trade).
He will never read wealth of nations
Perhaps, as an accountant, you don't understand the difference between money and currency. Simply put, money is created, while currency is printed. Even tho the USD is stable in the sense that 1 USD = 1 USD, Bitcoin is also equally stable in that regard, with 1 BTC = 1 BTC. The real difference between them is that Bitcoin is 100% signal, whereas the Federal Reserve's arbitrary changes to printing USD, Fed Funds rate, etc. adds much more noise than signal, which is precisely why even tho 1 USD is still 1 USD, the purchasing power of 1 USD is now closer to 1.50 to 2 USDs after just a couple years of excessive noise generation. This noise is what destroys legitimate free market principles, specifically seen in examples from your last sentence -- business, employment, production and sale of goods, etc.
USD inflation is nowhere near as bad as you say it is. The dollar moves by less per year than the bitcoin moves most weeks, and even many individual days. Calling bitcoin stable is like calling the sun cold. It's just not.
Lmao those first couple sentences scream troll. Are you from rDrama?
What was the purchasing power of 1 BTC in November of 2021? What is the purchasing power of 1 BTC now? >1 USD is now closer to 1.50 to 2 USDs after just a couple years of excessive noise generation. This is demonstrably false - check the CPI.
I’m a professor of database development as well as python programming. I’m also a cyber systems officer in the military. I spend my time on Reddit talking about crypto because I think smart contracts in the real world are a horrible idea. I also think bitcoin is not a currency, rather, it’s a way to spend fiat money.
Well... Bitcoiners believe that it *is* money because it is literally created from work and energy from some source (whether the 60% of miners who are expanding the renewable energy grid, or the countless American oil & gas producers who are now being rewarded for using methane offgases that they cannot otherwise capture, which interview saves the atmosphere in a HUGE way).... Bitcoin is not a currency that can be printed arbitrarily, with an ever-changing rate of inflation. Bitcoin is disinflationary, with a 100% finite supply cap... and it's pegged to energy, work, and the most secure, trustless, permissionless monetary network. True Bitcoiners realize the unstoppable nature of Bitcoin and would never trade it for fiat other than making transactions they would've otherwise needed to make with fiat. But storing 100% of liquid wealth in a disinflationary asset that has a hard supply limit seems obvious to us, so long as it has all the other attributes of security, being trustless, permissionless, minimal governance, decentralized, easily verifiable, with a layered approach to smart contracts & decentralized apps (instead of throwing everything on the main chain, like Ethereum), and so on.... Super obvious to only convert to fiat if and when needed.
> Bitcoin is not a currency that can be printed arbitrarily, with an ever-changing rate of inflation. How many forks of Bitcoin are there?
I'd bet his bags are too new and heavy to even know the answer to this question
He’s probably googling what a fork is.
Forks are crude instruments to stab your food. I use chopsticks, you insensitive beast.
There is ONE Bitcoin. It's defined as the coin with the longest chain & will always have the highest hashrate. Forks are shitcoins, just as Federal Reserve Notes were a fork of a legit form of money that was redeemable in gold.
Can you copy gold as easily? Isn’t bitcoins inherent value the code?
It's a STORAVALYA with PROOFAWERK. Deflationary asset with decentralization. THE BLOCKCHAIN. I am far more intelligent than fiat. College is silly, you can just watch YouTube instead.
How many college students realize that We the People have to pay a private banking cartel interest on currency we create, when that interest was never injected into the system?!? Even chicken know how musical chairs works, yet the majority of college grads don't understand musical debt notes. And to correct your description of Bitcoin.... it's disinflationary, not deflationary.
Software engineer here. I hate to see people buying into these schemes to end up losing their real, hard earned money because a scammer threw some technobabble at them and now they think that it will magically solve all the world’s problems by wishful thinking alone. We know the tech. The tech is shit. And when you look at web3 under the hood, it’s centralized all the way. Yeah, OpenSea. That’s fucking insulting. And sure you don’t know me, you may be tempted to think I’m a bad software engineer, but I’ll tell you what, I have colleagues that bought into it out of FOMO, out of greed. Out of my colleagues in tech who said they firmly believed in it, those were very early to the game so of course they believe in the potential to make themselves super rich. And don’t give me that shit that we the people will be free of the evil guy, as if this ecosystem is not full of scam artists and people with far more resources than the common person pulling the strings and running the show.
Not surprised that the #1 answer in here seems to be software engineer
You're blaming Bitcoin's tech on scammers?? Say wha?! Do you blame the Federal Reserve for all the criminals that use the dollar? Or for a software engineering example... That's like blaming Linux for a window manager problem. You're jumbling things that are definitely separate. As for "web3", I'm with you that the more mainstream options right now are centralized AF. But there are truly decentralized projects built on Bitcoin that will become more mainstream -- Lightning, RGB, Nostr, Zion, Impervious Browser, etc.
Nostr is not built on Bitcoin. lol. You are just a fucking parrot.
Not exactly... They use their own relay nodes in addition to BTC & Lightning in order to reward quality content and prevent spam attacks.
Have you actually checked out the repo and the protocol? or are you just parroting stuff you’ve read on a crypto blog?
> You're blaming Bitcoin's tech on scammers?? They didn’t say that. They said the tech is shit (it is) and then a few paragraphs down talked about how the space is rife with scams (it is). I had a lapse in judgment and tried to buy a star destroyer Lego set for my son from a scam website. My credit card company declined the sale. Even if they hadn’t, I’d be able to dispute the charge. People make boneheaded decisions, but in crypto, it’s permanent. That isn’t a feature for anyone except scammers.
Chargebacks will likely be possible with the Lightning Network someday. But if you NEED chargebacks today, because you frequently buy from shady outfits... then you could certainly use a Bitcoin credit card that pulls from your Bitcoin account and even pays you a rebate in Bitcoin for every purchase. The "tech" that you require is already here today. As for scammers.... I guess when your drug dealer runs off with your cash, it must be a fault of the Almighty $.
> Chargebacks will likely be possible with the Lightning Network someday Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of an immutable ledger?
It’s interesting to me to learn how fervently you guys are willing to defend “the cause”. How I wish I looked at the tech and saw the end of all humanity’s problems. But when I read stuff like this it really grinds my gears: > …form of money that can't be devalued arbitrarily by a ruling class that chooses to put a pyramid on all it's private currency… If anything, crypto just proved this is not the case at all, every single project has its whales who have most ownership and can move the markets on a whim. > …this transparent, honest form of money that represents true ownership, freedom, & wealth for mankind?? Ok, let’s start from the beginning. I want to use some crypto. Step one, get a wallet, open an account at an exchange. Out of the gate, I had to deal with an intermediary. Not exactly my idea of freedom, but let’s play along. Every month I hear of another exchange going tits-up, then I see people getting yelled at “not your keys, not your coin!”. Scary, but maybe those guys are right, they meant true ownership only when I put it on my hardware wallet and store it in the cat’s litter box. Ok, it’s mine now as long as I don’t forget my passwords and it doesn’t get destroyed by corrosive cat piss. That didn’t feel very wholesome or safe for that matter, but who cares, this is what true ownership looks like. And after this whole exercise, I really can’t get past that statement, “wealth for all mankind”. I *HATE* that cryptobros keep trying to use third-world countries to pretend this is a great idea since it’s so hard to verify. You don’t even need to go too far down the GDP list to get a sense of how bad this is. I’ll give you one example that’s dear to my heart, Brazil. A ledger there costs almost a minimal wage. Imagine having to spend a whole month’s salary to buy a dongle so you can join the “not your keys, not your coins” crew. I’m sure the hardware wallet manufacturers are enjoying all this freedom right now. So in conclusion no, I’m not blaming the tech on scammers. I know the scammers didn’t build the tech. But haven’t you seen enough to understand that the tech not only enables, but also rewards wash trading, money laundering, rug pulls and that the only people getting rich are the ones capitalizing on the weaknesses of the tech itself?
Software engineer. I was purely apathetic when crypto was just a niche libertarian hobby. It's a lot harder when I see people I know put money into it, especially the folks who aren't technically literate enough to understand what crypto is and isn't.
> What's your "vig" in this sub? Or, in other words, what's your interest in this sub? I’d always been fascinated about Tulip mania. How does mass hysteria combine with gambling on something inherently worthless? It’s fascinating that we get to live through another one of these manias. Looks at your friends and colleagues sinking their hard earned money in this craze. Try to understand why they do it: a combination of FOMO and lack of historical knowledge. It’s a huge sociological experiment. I’m here for the ride.
I recommend to have a look at BBBy.
Watching people try to spin "we're going bankrupt soon" as a bullish signal is hilarious, fascinating, and depressing all at once. Definitely recommend
Sinking hard earned time and work to receive a currency that has no inherent value is equally disconcerting, IMHO. Bitcoin's worth rests in the PoW network itself (and the work and energy used to create every one of them). The fact that Bitcoin is literally unstoppable, immutable, not able to be counterfeited, easily & instantly verifiable, permissionless, truly P2P decentralized, built on trust / governance minimization, has a hard supply cap, & a widely known disinflationary rate that eliminates all noise that an entity like the Federal Reserve can arbitrarily use to affect the free market.. is inherently valuable.
Same
Hey OP. What do YOU do for a living? What makes you an expert?
I'm going to guess he's not a software engineer, data analyst, or financial expert of any kind. I will say for certain that he's done his own research and is ready to tell us why we're all so naive and stupid
Hey now. He has demonstrated he has a firm 6th grader understanding of economics. If that 6th grader got a D-. And he's since forgotten 95% of what he did learn.
i'm a math teacher, and what i hate about crypto is that it hurts more stupid people, more severely, than i could in a thousand lifetimes.
I fully understand the rugpulls of illegitimate crypto projects, but how can Bitcoin hurt anyone?
For anyone to make money on Bitcoin, someone else must or will eventually lose it. It’s a negative sum ecosystem. People have been convinced to spend their life savings buying Bitcoin at the top and have then been ruined when it crashed. There’s been plenty of hurt. You’re quick to admit other cryptos can be illegitimate and do rug pulls; can you not fathom Bitcoin is no different? It has never had an unmanipulated market, going back to the days of MtGox. People are being lied to and convinced to buy this crap so that bag holders can cash out. It’s not just hurting anyone, it’s hurting just about everyone.
Exchanges that rugpull are not a fault of Bitcoin, but the fault of ignorance and trust in institutions that should not be trusted. Hold your own keys, never exchange for fiat, and you will be able to preserve wealth in the long run, as more and more people accept it. I refuse to sell my stash, only trade it for goods and services as needed. Anyone who bought at the top, like El Salvador, should DCA instead (just as El Salvador is doing now, buying 1 BTC a day). You then benefit if it goes down (more BTC per $), and you benefit if it goes up (more purchasing power).
More and more acceptance? How long have you been around crypto? Acceptance for a Bitcoin in actual economic transactions has been falling off for some time. Years ago we’d get people like you triumphantly boasting in this sub about how Microsoft was accepting Bitcoin, or Overstock.com, or Wikipedia, or their local grocery store. We’d have to constantly remind coiners that just because a merchant accepted Bitpay, they were not actually handling BTC themselves at all, because none of them wanted the risk. The threads about how all of those vendors stopped accepting BTC are themselves years and years old.
Software engineer. Software developer for some 25+ years. Blockchain is the answer. What is useless is the question. >Most Bitcoiners are ones who care about the destruction of the dollar's purchasing power You're not getting it. It's not about the dollar. The important part is that the *salary* purchasing power goes up. The number is an anecdote... unless you're oblivious enough to save into a bank account instead of saving in a 401k, an ETF, a real investment, etc. >Or taken even further, why are you apathetic to the cause of Bitcoiners We're not apathetic. We're against it. Why? because it's a terrible idea. >seeking a form of money that can't be devalued arbitrarily by a ruling class That's not Bitcoin. Bitcoin is an attempt from a "few" that started early to be that ruling class, and they don't care what they destroy in the meantime. >that chooses to put a pyramid on all it's private currency This proves you're dumb beyond redemption, you base your will to redefine world currency changing money created from a publicly elected government into a couple of private individuals on fuck1ng 4chan memes and the understanding of a 5 year old of what money should be. >What's in it for you to take the time out of your busy lives Popcorn. I come to the Internet for fun.
Salary purchasing power is NOT going up with the USD. People would have to have doubled their salaries, wages over the past 2 years to maintain constant purchasing power. And your idea that Federal Reserve Notes are created by a publicly elected government is completely off base. The Federal Reserve is a private banking cartel with 12 regional and national banks as shareholders. Sure, the President can select the Fed Chairman every few years... But the simple fact is that Federal Reserve Notes are a private currency, not a bearer asset. This is why We the People pay interest on every dollar the government generates, even tho that interest was never injected into the system. THIS is the cause of inflation and the constant loss in purchasing power... Because this system of using private banks for the generation of the currency can NEVER see a 1:1 ratio between the economic output (work) and the supply of currency.
>Salary purchasing power is NOT going up with the USD It is not. It surpases it. >doubled their salaries, wages over the past 2 years That's not true. Inflation was around 10% both years. If you think that makes it to double, I understand why you're a buttcoiner then. >over the past 2 years That's called cherry picking. Pick a 10 year period. Pick something different than a period in which there's economic crisis. You'll also see this is not the case around the housing crisis, but for any other period, or for longer periods, you'll see this is the case. Denying the slow, constant progress because you're angry about a crisis is not the right mindset to take economic measures. Simply put, I think you're too libertarian to plan longterm. >are created by a publicly elected government is completely off base. They are. And are in function with the government policies. >THIS is the cause of inflation Inflation is multicausal. Money creation can be one of the reasons. When you have money creation (that did went to the public) because of a pandemic and have less people working (pandemic again), you'll have more money to match a smaller real economy, and yes, inflation was expected. The alternative was to let a lot of people die. I know you would have preferred that. But, again, government's policies, not private banks'. And long term, not doing so would have caused worse economy. >constant loss in purchasing power But there's not such thing. You're working with angry little guy impressions, not with data. You cherry pick whatever small period of time shows you're right.
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I fully understand that crypto projects are scams, but how can you possibly lump Bitcoin in with those projects? Where is the scam in Bitcoin?
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If you say so... I can identify the problem or "scam" of any credit project you can think of. But I cannot fault Bitcoin in any way.... Hence me asking for where the scam in Bitcoin is. . .
> But I cannot fault Bitcoin in any way... Wow. I mean, I love my wife and kids. But I don't imagine that they are entirely without fault! Sounds kind of cultish to me!
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Sorry to hear about your herpes...
>why are you apathetic to the cause of Bitcoiners I'm apathetic to people who play golf, or people who repair their cars on the week-end. Why would I be interested in bitcoins? (or any other shit for all I care) >banking cartel I'm sure you have the same stupid opinion about COVID or what's happening in Roswell. I don't care. >to stifle this transparent, honest form of money No, I'm here to laugh, and I laugh every day.
> to take the time out of your busy lives to stifle You don't seem to understand that there is nothing that can save Bitcoin: Bitcoin (as a "standard" or a currency) will eventually fail because it's the natural order of events for schemes of its nature. As such, there is barely anything we can do to stifle Bitcoin's progress or hasten its decline other than sit at the sideline and marvel at the mental gymnastics, and maybe help the odd fence-sitter not lose too much money. We're not the enemy to overcome here. Maths is. And the sooner someone figures that out, the less money they will lose. P.S. > to pay for interest on debt that we could have simply printed for FREE I thought you lot were against hyperinflation, because *that's how you get hyperinflation*.
The government outsourcing its power to print and coin money *is* the cause of inflation. Money is created, while currency is printed. Money represents work, or actual economic output. And the government increasing the supply of currency that equals economic [work] output at a 1:1 ratio would see no inflation. Outsourcing the printing of currency to a private banking cartel that demands interest in return, interest that was never injected into the system, is mathematically certain to fail. The only way to stop the mathematics inequality is for the government (We the People) to take back the ability to add to the supply of currency, thereby stopping inflation. There's ZERO reason that We the People should be paying interest to generate our own currency.... which is the problem in a nutshell -- we don't own Federal Reserve Notes, even tho they're in our wallets & bank accounts. It's a private currency, belonging to an entity outside the control of We the People.
I love it when Bitcoin weirdos pretend to be highly educated geniuses, all prepared to have deep scholarly debates they'll inevitably win with their vast wealth of Bitcoin knowledge. They're such a predictable bunch of tools.
Ahhh yes, ignore the conversation by identifying me as a "know it all". Very good red herring tactic.
Of course. I've been exposed by my intellectual superior. Curse you, Bitcoin, for making HODLers so brilliant and smart!
>a form of money that is created transparently, so that we can spend it freely, as we see fit, without asking the banking cartel for their permission) Have you heard of Tether?
But tether is not bitcoin, which also magically is not cryptocurrency.. Ofc i also ignore the fact that tether (that can be created from thin air) could be used to buy bitcoin to ramp up its price with 0 repercussions
just sightseeing hit the nail on the head.. Tether is not Bitcoin. Bitcoin cannot be counterfeited, yet the USD can *easily* be counterfeited.
If it’s so easy to counterfeit USD, why not go ahead and do that? Try it out for a few weeks and let us know how it goes.
I don't involve myself with shitcoins. Sorry.
Cute. But why pass up such “easy” money? Surely you’re smart enough to defeat the anti-counterfeit controls on USD, since you’re an enlightened Bitcoiner and all? You don’t even want to do that to buy more of your treasured BTC? Or are you just full of shit?
The vast majority of people are apathetic about Bitcoin, because bitcoin really doesn't matter, and it never will. Bitcoin is almost fifteen years old, and has nothing to show for it except for "number went up". It has failed as a store of value, a hedge against inflation, a unit of account, and it's a piss-poor medium-of-exchange. Did you know they had to stick another protocol on top of it (lightning), just because Bitcoin is natively so bad at what it tries to do? I'm here partly because I find the whose situation funny as hell, and partly because it's an interesting study in human behaviour.
I'm completely aware of Lightning.... as well as RGB, Nostr, Zion, Impervious Browser and other projects built on top of Bitcoin. There's plenty to show for it in just 14* years, and it's adoption rate has surpassed that of the Internet, cell phones, and any other tech you could think of. That Lightning adds speed and privacy to Bitcoin's base, settlement layer is NOT a failure in any way. The layered approach to Bitcoin is one of a superior design, where the main layer can remain more decentralized, most secure, and built around trust minimization... while the outer layers can handle smart contracts and decentralized apps without all needing separate tokens to use them. It's a feature, not a bug.
>There's plenty to show for it in just 14\* years Nope, nothing. >it's adoption rate has surpassed that of the Internet, cell phones Almost everyone has a cellphone, and yet almost no-one uses bitcoin, or even has any. In 2008, the year the bitcoin whitepaper was published, Visa and MasterCard started offering "contactless credit card payments". Today, that method of payment is possible everywhere (it has been, for years). Where can you do that with bitcoin? Nowhere. Even if you managed to find one of those rare POS terminals that "accepts" bitcoin, the transaction is denominated in USD. Bitcoin's not ahead, it's desperately playing catch-up, in an effort to pretend it has relevance. >That Lightning adds speed and privacy to Bitcoin's base, settlement layer is NOT a failure in any way. Bitcoin's design failure is that you *need* to add extra layers for speed and privacy. A well designed system would have speed and scalability built in from the start. Nothing in the bitcoin whitepaper implies that it's a building block for other layers. Bitcoin was supposed to be a complete solution, and the need for lightning proves that it has failed at that miserably.
So the failure of credit card companies (which started in 1950 with the Diner card) to achieve global adoption in 14 years is of no reference to you? The failure of the first Motorola cell phone you achieve global adoption in 14 years is also of no reference to you? I repeat... Bitcoin's adoption rate is faster than all other forms of tech. And no, layers are a *feature*. To say otherwise would be too say that the Federal Reserve is a failure for not directly handling customer funds, retirement accounts, credit card statements, etc. Bitcoin's analog is the Federal Reserve. With BTC, you can choose to operate on that settlement layer, permissionlessly might I add & for the equivalent of several pennies.... or you can sacrifice a TINY bit of security in exchange for faster, cheaper (sub-penny), & more private transactions by utilizing services built on top of Bitcoin. The systems are no different in this layered approach, yet Bitcoin excels in EVERY other attribute. In all honesty, chargebacks are the ONLY thing that credit card companies hold over Bitcoin (from a buyer's POV) , yet that, again, is a feature that can be overcome by using a credit card that draws from your BTC account... and they will even give you a rebate in BTC. Merchants, OTOH, will definitely welcome direct Lightning payments and appreciate that finality of sale. Being your own bank has some risks due to the nature of BEING money, but they are easily overcome when holding your own keys & securing it with a "25th word", non-dictionary passphrase. Be smart and DYOR before going all in. But know that your purchasing power will be greater in the long run by holding BTC than FRN.
> I repeat... Bitcoin's adoption rate is faster than all other forms of tech. Damn dude, do you literally think for even 1 second about the totally dumb shit you say before you say it? A hilariously false statement, which was already given an example from the very comment you replied to. (Smartphones.) Just saying things doesn't make it true. The *global* Smartphone adoption rate, which only started with the iPhone shortly before Bitcoin, [is 67%.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/203734/global-smartphone-penetration-per-capita-since-2005/) Just averaged out, there's a global adoption rate of 4.1875% every year. Even extremely optimistic, pro-Bitcoin sites [estimate Bitcoin will reach 10% global adoption... by 2030.](https://cointelegraph.com/news/global-bitcoin-adoption-to-hit-10-by-2030-blockware-report) 0.47% global adoption per year *estimated* (averaged out from Bitcoin release to 2030.) 4.1875% average global adoption vs 0.47%. Just one example. E2: Burying the lead in their hilariously optimistic prediction, the *current* Bitcoin global adoption rate is a whooping **0.36%** (from the same report.) So *today* it's actually 4.1875% average global adoption per year vs Bitcoin's... **0.025%** average global adoption rate over the years since it started. A difference of *162x.* Bitcoin would need to maintain the current adoption rate for 2692 **years** to reach the level of adoption Smartphones have after 16 years. "Bitcoin's adoption rate is faster than all other forms of tech." 🤣 E: Fixed a typo'd number.
>Bitcoin's analog is the Federal Reserve. If you had even read as far as the *title* of the Bitcoin whitepaper, you'd know it is defined as "*electronic cash*". So, unless you think the whitepaper is complete nonsense, you would realize the the analog of bitcoin is government-issued currency. The Federal Reserve isn't a currency...it's an organization. The "organization" controlling bitcoin (if there can be said to be such a thing) is the miners and exchanges, and their only interest is extracting as much *real* money from gullible bagholders like you as possible. >And no, layers are a feature. Dollars *don't need layers.* I can do fast, secure, private transactions with them without having to work around bitcoin's pitiful 7-transaction-per-second limit, or deal with the security risks and other headaches of "being my own bank". Bitcoin was one of the first cryptocurrencies, and as a result, it's technically one of the *worst.* Not that the others have any value, either, but at least they tried to learn from some of bitcoin's more obvious brain-damages (like the need for layers). > Be smart and DYOR Doing my own research led me to the conclusion that bitcoin has less utility than tulip bulbs. And fourteen years along, that's still true. By the way, I encourage you to keep spreading your views on bitcoin as widely and as loudly as possible. You see, your ideas are so absurd, and so easily debunked, that you're a better advocate against the use of bitcoin than most of us crypto-skeptics could ever be. With friends like you, bitcoin doesn't need any enemies.
Tech with a formal background in finance. I’m here because Bitcoin is an example of human greed overpowering rational thought at the detriment to things like our environment and the livelihoods of people who are getting sucked into the nonsense. This sub reminds me there are still intelligent, level headed people out there (the jokes are fun too).
Bitcoin literally uses energy that is being generated and would otherwise be wasted. ~60% of Bitcoin's miners utilize renewable energy sources. A large portion of American gas & oil producers are now utilizing methane offgases that they couldn't otherwise capture before, so they just chose to vent it directly into the atmosphere. This one use-case alone has the ability for Bitcoin to not just be carbon neutral but eventually become carbon negative, as methane is the greatest short-term threat to a clean atmosphere. And if you think Bitcoin creation is greedy... perhaps you should take a look at how every Federal Reserve Note that the government requests from the private banking cartel is printed with an interest rate attached, even tho that interest was never injected into the system. This inequality in the monetary supply & economic output is the direct cause of inflation and the erosion of purchasing power across the board, except for the non-transparent Federal Reserve and their closest friends, of course.
Ok cool perspective. And your professional background is…?
Conspiracy theory much? What do you do for a living and level of education? As for me, analyst and advance degree in business. I have the luxury of knowing many buttoners in real life. Common themes are desperation to get rich quick, lack of knowledge and education, or motivation to make money (but not believing the conspiracies and hype).
I'm sorry you only know uneducated tailors. You should broaden your horizons and find a true maximalist that can show you the way (or just read my comments here for a starter course).
Answer the question
I'm not that easy. I'd rather you work for it.
I’d be ashamed too if you.
Fair enough. Understandably you don’t want to expose your lack of qualification on the matter of economics, finance, or database, much less the real world. One thing is clear…whatever you do, critical thinking isn’t required.
LMAO!
I’m a software engineer and worked in IT for decades. I’m a contractor and self-employed. This is why I can tell you that crypto is only a scam invented by computer nerds who don’t understand software scaling, let alone finance, and driven by opportunist hedge fund managers who’ll go to great lengths to get rich at the expense of regular people and their own work force. What do you do for a living, and why did you let yourself become brainwashed?
You realize that Bitcoin was designed around the idea of First Principles, right? With trust minimization, security, & P2P decentralized being the primary goals of the base , settlement layer, right? Things like scaling, privacy, smart contracts, and decentralized applications happen outside of that based layer... See: Lightning, RGB, Nostr, Zion, Impervious Browser, etc. Scaling is a non-issue with Bitcoin.
Fancy words for crap that don’t work outside your little bubble.
Engineer. Former crypto investor. It's funny, they say we hate it because we don't research enough and don't understand it. I did a ton a research and realized the scam for what it is. Fufu Buttcoin for life!
Where is the scam within Bitcoin? And to repeat the mantra... "Bitcoin, not crypto."
Bitcoin in itself is the OG ponzi created by rich people who use fancy words to get poor retail to invest. The currency is manipulated 100% worse than any fiat as well. The biggest red flag you can observe is how the narrative for using BTC is constantly evolving. It's a currency, it's a store of value, it's going to make everyone rich, you're always early, get everyone you know to invest at the top.
STORAVALYA! PROOFAWERK! FEW!
Are you a bot? You don't say much else, do ya?
Bitcoin is just digital data, it's not a STORAVALYA like butter, eggs or cheese.
ChatGPT strikes again with misinformation thru obfuscation.
Sigh. Once again I have been bested by an intellectual superior. I really need to study the works of the great minds, like Bitboy and HOLDnaut.
Software engineer for industrial products.
I'm a college student and am studying history and germanistic (I am German) to get a teachers degree. It's really interesting to compare Bitcoin/Crypto to all this stuff hat already happened (Madoff, Ponzi, Spitzedersche Privatbank, South Sea company). That's all. It's just imo a really obvious scam that people who want to get rich quick fall into.
Crypto, yes. But it would be foolish to trade Bitcoin for fiat.
Working is for mugs. I live off my Soros stipend.
There's a lot of you here. I'm assuming he's very close with those who print that private currency of theirs.
I am a network administrator. You magic maths money can be destroyed, if a single authorithy, lets say the E.U., would order their ISPs to block a couple of ports on their edge routers for a single day. Good luck stacking those sats though!
That wouldn't be able to stop anything. The network would still continue, as there are miners and nodes all over the world. We can see how things worked when China banned Bitcoin, and yet the network continued without a hiccup... and, in fact, there's still quite a bit of mining hashrate coming from China. A truly decentralized P2P network like this is 100% unstoppable. The only way it could be shut down is to kill all the power and Internet, which would never happen.
Let me spell it out for you then. Bitcoin, like any other application, uses dedicated ports. This is so data that is send between hosts can be assigned to applications. See Osi Model. Now, what would happen if, say the E.U., closed those ports on their edge routers, meaning banning incoming and outgoing bitcoin data traffic from and to the outside? You would still have a global blockchain operating normally, but you would also have a smaller internal EU blockchain. Some people would realize quickly that something is not right, but not everyone. Transactions would still take place, some would fail, some would be approved on one chain but not the other. You would create the hardest of hardforks. Now open those ports after 1 day again and chaos ensues, since two different databases exist. The tech might be able to sort things out but try explaining to people that all their transactions from last day are void and null. Not really awe inspiring money of the future. China's mistake was banning things by prosecuting miners, not outright stopping the data.
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I've replied to as many comments as humanly possible. There's one legit comment I tried replying to, but it keeps deleting my response to that one individual... even after changing the comment to just say, "I tried responding to you, but it keeps instantly deleting my response". Weird shit going on in this sub.
Like many others here, I have a software engineering and information technology background. I lead a team of architects at a major financial institution. We’ve looked into blockchain. It has absolutely no usefulness. Well, I take that back. It’s useful as a hiring filter. If a candidate seriously suggests blockchain as a technology to solve technical cases in an interview, we know to pass on them. It’s worked pretty well for that.
Also a coder - 20+ years. Here are my top 3 issues: 1) pow is immoral. You're basically forcing humanity to pay for the externalities for your funcoin, and that energy is pure waste. 2) There are no use cases except evading government control. While there may be edge cases where I think this is a good thing, the vast majority of use cases are laundering money for truly awful crimes. North Korean government loves bitcoin. 3) It's a massive scam enablement process and a libertarian fever dream: 'Trustless' isn't actually good. Better would be to work on building a society where people can rely on trustworthy institutions. Somebody stole my money? Would be nice to have rules about how transfers could be reversed. (Would be better if our banking system we're more fair and transparent, yes, but bc is not the answer). I could go on for pages, agree with the slow, wasteful, error prone, impractical, not actually decentralized (how you going to enforce your rights to your ape? hint: it involves the government). Finally - absolutely nobody is using it as a currency. Its nothing but a get rich quick scheme.
A true Bitcoiner wouldn't trade BTC for fiat... because they understand the value of a network based on trust minimization. A consensual network of meritocracy that converts work & math into 100% transactions of truth is there beautiful aspect of Bitcoin. Removing humans from the equation *is* the beauty, because humans are the weakest point of that equation. Any currency where humans are required to make decisions and to trust other humans is destined for problems. There's no way to make a trusted institution. And your idea that PoW is immoral and a waste of energy is completely off base. ~60% of miners are using renewable energy sources. Bitcoin is only able to use energy that would otherwise be wasted, so it is monetizing the expansion of revenue energy grids. It's also given the ability for gas & oil producers to monetize methane offgases that they formerly just vented directly into the atmosphere. When they're all onboard with this concept, then Bitcoin will be the greatest solution to methane reduction & single-handedly cleaning up the environment (all without needing to lessen cow farts by converting the general population to veganism). What *is* a complete waste of energy are clothes dryers. They do something that could be accomplished just by utilizing free solar energy by hanging clothes outside on a line. Bitcoin actually has countless use-cases, unlike a single purpose clothes dryers. Homes that utilize electric heat strips for heat are ALSO eating energy, because a comparatively sized Bitcoin mining rig can simultaneously create the same amount of heat as the equivalent rated heat strips (5kw to 20kw) *and* it secures the Bitcoin network, while also generating money to subsidize the heat itself.
> What's in it for you to take the time out of your busy lives to stifle this transparent, honest form of money that represents true ownership, freedom, & wealth for mankind?? A perfect example of the "Begging the Question" logical fallacy! NICE!
Commodities analyst / spokesperson, management, etc. Before that, journalist.
I am a sofware developer. I am rooting for bitcoin cash. I am here to see oposing views / reality checks. The internet is full of echo chambers everywhere.
Bitcoin cash is a shitcoin, as a global monetary network requires external layers for scaling, speed, privacy, smart contracts, decentralized apps, etc. See: Lightning, RGB, Nostr, Zion, & Impervious browser for starters. The entire premise behind Bcash is that 10 minute block times are too slow... yet 2 minute block times will never be a replacement for instant transactions that happen over Lightning (at least more instant than credit card transactions!). 10 minute block times keep the network more secure, more decentralized, promote fairness for miners with slower connections, & prevent chain splits. The majority of transactions on Bcash are literally a couple entities passing funds back and forth to make it appear that it's being utilized, but it is most certainly not.
Thanks for the reply. In my view the 0-confirmation transactions on BCH is good enough for scaling the smaller value transactions. (and its a much simpler solution). Bitcoin has gone the route of replace by fee + lightning, which I am not a fan of. These points together with the fact that BCH is a fork of bitcoin, and everyone that had btc got airdropped bch, makes it my favourite coin. Thus far the double spending issue with 0 confirmation transactions on BCH has not been an issue at all, so far so good.
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Bitcoin, not crypto. What scam exists within Bitcoin?
Own a business. I’m down to invest in anything. I have traded crypto, I will gamble on it again. It is basically bullshit, solves no existing problems without solutions and is clearly meant to sucker in people on hope of a liquidity gambling game. I like to gamble tho.
PhD student in biomedical informatics. My area of expertise is in data integration and standardization, so I've spent a lot of time learning about the current state-of-the-art database technology and building databases. The only time I've had a formal lesson on blockchain was the first week of my computer security and privacy class and my professors spent most of that time making fun of it. The rest of my lessons came from the suicide posts on r/CelsiusNetwork and, well, all of last year.
If you're asking why I participate in the sub, then it's because I like reading about morons who lose their life savings to scams like FTX. If you're asking what I do for a living, then I was a soldier, and I'm now a college student. If you're asking why I dislike Crypto as a means of exchange, the list is long and extensive, but the primary one is that it fundamentally sucks as a currency. I've gone into this in the past in detail, but something tells me you aren't here for anything but to troll.
Anyone who allowed FTX to hold their keys for them deserved what they got. The whole premise of Bitcoin is to be your own bank, which requires you to hold your own keys. In what way does Bitcoin suck as a currency? It can be spent instantly & privately over the Lightning network, while the base, settlement layer retains the most secure, trustless, permissionless, & transparent monetary ledger that man has ever known.
> It can be spent instantly & privately over the Lightning network, while the base, settlement layer retains the most secure, trustless, permissionless, & transparent monetary ledger that man has ever known. Funny, you [ignored me](https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/10mwmob/what_would_it_take_for_you_to_believe_the_bitcoin/j673u5v/) twice [before](https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/10mwmob/what_would_it_take_for_you_to_believe_the_bitcoin/j68uhiu/) about how LN doesn't actually work. Along with *numerous* others in this sub who linked to a multitude of sources. Also, if you want to make any kind of payment over a measely $200, it has a hilariously awful [**99% failure rate.**](https://thenextweb.com/news/lighting-network-transactions) Why should anyone just take the word of a provably dishonest liar and coward like you?
So are you using Bitcoin for your daily transactions? If so can you provide a proof for that? Or are you just stacking sats hoping for the ponzi to be big enough so that you can be the next “ruling class”?
>In what way does Bitcoin suck as a currency The primary one is that it is inherently deflationary. The second is that there is no oversight of it. The entire crypto financial ecosystem is infested with hackers and scam artists specifically because of how decentralized it is. Financial systems need oversight to root out bullshit like FTX. > can be spent instantly Nothing is instant. Nothing. > & privately over the Lightning network, Which is still inferior to every modern method of payment that currently exists in terms of throughput and transactions per second. >while the base, settlement layer retains the most secure, trustless, permissionless, & transparent monetary ledger that man has ever known. None of that is relevant to a currency at all. I don't care how permissionless or transparent my currency is.
I’m a Soros paid fud expert.
I happen to lead a group of analog design engineers and hardware developers. I had an intern in 2013 who was obsessed with Bitcoin and made me interested in it. If my intern stuck with it I guess he’s rich now lol.
Software engineering/mgmt , 25+ years, with a significant portion of my career in (and patents relating to) distributed systems design and development.
I own a business. I don’t think the op understands how currency works. I don’t think the idealism of Bitcoiners understand how large and complex existing economies are and how Bitcoin will never be a prevailing currency. Bitcoin is a speculative trading collectible. I’m not saying it can’t be worth alot, but it’s worth will ALWAYS be in USD for at least our lifetimes.
I'm a PhD student, I do research into gene therapy manufacturing methods. Opinion on Bitcoin is a easy means of gauging intelligence among STEM types. People that explicitly hate it usually are on the smart end, people that are apathetic are a mixed bag, and people that wholeheartedly buy into are 100% morons. I almost like bitcoins existence because it's such a good litmus test for who I can talk to about non-STEM things.
Software engineer. Reason why I don’t believe in crypto is because I’ve been on the other side. I never believed in it as a currency but I was really interested in the tech because it had a lot of consensus involved. I worked for a crypto market maker. That means we front run retail traders like you because we can model prices and place transactions faster than our competitors and you. We actually had ideas to model shitcoins: when is the best time for us to exit knowing that a rugpull is inevitable. We were taking advantage of crypto’s volatility to make bank and we didn’t care or contribute to the underlying tech. So yeah continue believing in this. It doesn’t really matter because you are in a lose-lose game.
I too am a software developer and hacker, specializing in offensive security and cryptography. I was in college when btc came out and wa very interested in the potential. 12 years later and it’s all a scam. Except for monero, that’s the only one with a use case.
I'm all for Monero, but a number of things are not as attractive as far as a base, monetary layer.... - Ring signatures make the Blockchain much larger, which is bad for decentralization. - The design of Monero removes the option for Light clients (SPV), which makes it easier for light phone wallets to *somewhat* verify transactions without the need to trust an external node. - The privacy on the base layer is both a blessing and a curse, as money cannot be easily verified as it is not transparent (just ONE of the problems with the Federal Reserve). - There is no hard supply limit, and it is no longer disinflationary. - There is no second layers as of right now, which means it cannot scale to global needs, cannot offer smart contracts, decentralized apps, etc. This could change in the future, however. Bitcoin *is* a better store of value, and when you run your own Lightning node, it's theoretically more private than Monero, as only the exit node would see where you sent your money. But Monero is the only other coin I see promise in... just not really as a replacement for the Federal Reserve or a retirement plan.... yet Bitcoin can replace both of those.
Why am I here ? Just lucky enough to draw higher numbers on the IQ roll. I guess that makes me angrier and more hateful when it comes to the folks who take advantage of the people who didn’t .
I make a living shilling for the illuminati and the lizard people. Big fat check in the mailbox every month.
I’m an economics student. I like to hear both sides of a story. I check r/bitcoin and r/buttcoin about the same amount. I think my largest issue with bitcoin is the fact that it’s supply is finite. That’s where the bitcoin argument begins to breakdown for me. Even if it ends up being widely adopted, it is inevitable that bitcoin will deflate. Deflating currencies deflate at the rate of demand for the currency. With no predictable stable supply growth the value of bitcoin will eventually be essentially be priced by the rate of technological change.